Clean and Wholesome Western Cowboy Romance: A Cowboy's Salvation (Clean and Wholesome Western Cowboy Romance) (ePub)

Soldiers toiled on the earthen ground, clenching at the flesh of this tempting terrain to claim it as their own. My brother nearly succumbed to this battle, fleeing elsewhere in 1848. The haven in which he now resides most certainly transcends the grim horrors of war.  

But still, I relish in the delight of this new land, the unchartered stretches of the American West. A land swept by the woes of avarice, but fraught with the unspoken charms and riches of a new destiny.

The simpering trees whispered in my ears, the fresh grass grazed the underside of my velvet feet as I beheld the skies of the unknown. The sky itself seemed to unfold above me like a sapphire stained cover, embracing me in its glory. I was a woman, tinged by a legacy that trailed a rutted path behind me. Perhaps the land we owned was the plunder of the innocent, the ill acquired treasure of an outlaw, but no one knew for sure. My father left us this home and land after a fatal bout with cholera in 1848. I knew nothing of my father, but his capricious bouts with law, how he flirted with the dangers of easy riches. Every breath I bellowed seemed to release my buried shames and secrets, more and more. The man of which she spoke held fathomless depths I had yet to learn. 

Mama sat stoically, nurturing aged fabrics, prickling their delicate layers with a sowing needle as though the cotton woven shards were canvas of her own making. Her matronly discipline was ill fitted for her gracefully aged face. She retained her youthful glow, flushed cheeks and raven hair, which cascaded down her shoulders. 

 After we settled here, she recoiled into a granite shell of bitterness. I reckon she was marred by disappointment, and submerged her past in these garments. I tended to her sowing every day to help us get by without daddy. The money he left must have been tarnished by his own transgressions, so we never beheld that money, we feared its tainted legacy would usher a new age of tempting dangers and riches. Her Bible always sat just a few feet away on her sewing table, and she ingested its every word to efface the grim trail of our legacy. 

She was set in her ways, and every man who unfurled a smile of pearlescent teeth hid a devious trap in his sweltering, handsome eyes-according to her. But I loved the freedom of my youthful purity, being unattached, wandering the wilderness like a flightless bird. Bound to the land, swearing an allegiance only to myself. 

Loud knocks thrashed against the door, and we exchanged hopeful glances. It was Old McGregor, the fierce lawman, stalwart in frame, unflinching in gaze, a man who sought to ravage crime as he saw fit. His tailored suit sat primly against his broad shoulders, his mustache sweeping fruitfully against his upper lip. He warned us to evade the charms of newcomers, particularly travelers and cowboys. We bid him a curt but well mannered adieu. 

As if lawman McGregor's words painted a melodic tune of fate into the air, there the horseman strode before me hours later, as the sun collapsed, sinking behind the puckered tip of the mountain peak, rays skipping gleefully past the lake and onto my lawn. The crimson tinged dirt rustled beneath the towering stature of the horseman, and he trailed behind his few comrades who surveyed the town, for reasons I do not know.  

His gaze rippled my composure into two, nearly weakening my dignified pose. His steely blue eyes bottled the intensity of a knight, but the kindness of a gentleman. McGregor forewarned an influx of horseman, but this man lacked the transient gruffness of an outlaw. His face, carved like limestone, was contoured by a jagged steel jaw, most befitting for a hero. His glowing honey hair glistened amid the muted sunlight. His skin appeared decadently drizzled by the torrid summer, tarnished to a rich tan color.